It’s a bang-bang play, but umpire Dick Pitsch makes the out call.

The runner at third breaks for home. The first baseman throws to the catcher. There is a slide. There is a tag. Umpire Don Pitsch makes the call. Out. One team celebrates a championship.

The other pleads with the Pitsch brothers that the first baseman pulled his foot and the catcher missed the tag.

Telling the story several years later, the Pitsch brothers smile at the memory. It’s not that they revel in the attention that inevitably comes when an umpire makes a close call. It’s that after more than four decades of making such calls for area Little Leagues, they still get a thrill from being on top of the action as young players enjoy a sport they have loved for a lifetime.

Born 15 minutes apart in November of 1931, the twin brothers grew up in northeast Portland where as teens they played on a Police Activities League baseball team. Each served in the Korean War, and earned a living at Nabisco in Portland where Dick made the filling for Oreo cookies and Don worked in the bakery.

Each was a coach while their sons played at Columbia and Evergreen Little Leagues in Vancouver.

When their sons’ Little League days ended, Don and Dick stuck around. Recognizing a need — many games were umpired by untrained parents from the crowd, they recall — the brothers turned to calling games. They were among the first members of an association of umpires that was formed to organize the process of assigning officials to local Little Leagues.

Like all aspects of local Little League programs, the umpires are volunteers. Nick Haluschak, a veteran Little League umpire and volunteer, notes Little League umpires work for “cold hot dogs and warm Pepsi.”

Dick and Don umpired a series of high school all-star games more than 30 years ago, but they never saw umpiring as a way to make money or climb a ladder.

“I’m just happy with Little League,” Dick says. “They’re exciting games and everyone is learning the game.”

Some in the crowd, of course, believe they know the game better than the umpires. But the protestations of coaches and parents don’t seem to faze the Pitschs.

“It all goes in one ear and out the other,” Don says.

Terry Barnes, the manager for this year’s Central Vancouver majors all-star team, says the Pitsch brothers are under appreciated.

“They’re very capable,” Barnes said. “They just seem to have a good attitude about things ... They seem to take comments from fans and coaches and just let it roll off their shoulders.”

More than 40 years after they started calling games, the Pitsch brothers still call three or more games each week — most often together. They work the base paths and behind the plate, mostly for games on diamonds with the Little League 60-foot base paths.

They are awaiting this season’s assignments for state tournaments, which are about to begin.

Mike Ray, the administrator for one of the local Little League district, says the Pitsch brothers’ contribution “shows what Little League really is truly about for the adults, and that’s volunteerism.”

The Pitsch brothers don’t stop at umpiring. Ray notes that they have been regular volunteers working on fields at the Western Regional Softball Tournament in recent summers. “I’d like to have another 10 to 12 just like them,” Ray says.

Highlights of their long career include Dick being selected to call games at the 2004 Little League Softball Western Regionals, and Don working the 2002 Little League Baseball Western Regionals.

At that tournament in San Bernadino, Calif., the brothers pulled a trick on their peers. As Dick tells it, he took his brother’s place at a post-game evaluation session. When his turn to chime in arrived, Dick said, “I thought you guys were supposed to be aware of everything going on around you. My name is Dick, not Don.”

That gotcha moment apparently got a good laugh then, and elicits chuckles as the brothers retell it. It captures the good humor others admire and enjoy.

“Their egos aren’t wrapped up in umpiring at all,” Barnes, the Central Vancouver manger, said. “They’re always smiling.”

From watching Randy Myers grow from a quiet Little Leaguer to a colorful major league pitcher, to making bang-bang judgments in championship games, umpiring for Little League has given them plenty to smile about, the brothers say.

As for the dramatic end to that all-star championship game a few years back? Well, let an umpire have the final say:

“I was third base (umpire),” Darrin Leggett says. “We had a couple of really quick calls and both of those guys got their calls right.”

Paul Danzer covers Community Sports for The Columbian. He can be reached at 360-735-4521 or by e-mail at paul.danzer@columbian.com.